Significance
by Literary Eden
Summary: A whisper slithers through the air, spinning tales of deception and wickedness. Treachery and love tangle, spilling tears, shedding blood. The hill rots and dies away, curling in on itself as the Town around it falls to pieces.


_Significance_

_Literary Eden_

_Prologue_

_This story was written soley for the enjoyment of myself and the readers.  
><em>_I do not own, nor do I claim to own, The Nightmare Before Christmas or any of it characters in any way._

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><p>A pair of pale, somber eyes observed the town with a hollow sort of dejection, the gaze so translucently blue it seemed almost spectral, otherworldly. His footsteps were like whispers against the cobblestone road, the gleaming white skin of his hands jammed deep into the softness of his pockets.<p>

With his arrival, the vigorous biting wind had grown still, and in its absence the air had become stale and thick with cold. The night glared with hatred from above and he felt its revulsion like a hot spear against his skin. With spite, the dusk swallowed the moon and stars back into the darkness of its navy web, banishing him to the gloom.

Cast in shadow, the stranger pressed on, the dense brush around him burning with savage, flaming eyes. Growls trembled into the air, the beasts trilling with throaty malice and sinister threats, yet none dared move to attack. He kept his eyes on the stones beneath him as he moved, a warning chill lingering in his wake. It spread with curling fingers, whispering through the quiescent atmosphere and coiling a frigid embrace around all life it touched.

The path before him twisted, warping its way between one crooked building after another and after another, before forking and snarling upwards towards a towering home. It was here that he stopped, his shoulders straightening as he looked up at the bright windows.

The man frowned, and across his ghoulish eyes flickered a stark reflection of horror and pungent guilt. He could hear the phantom thunder of devastation quaking in the distance, see the sky split open with the promise of ruin; it was a deafening crack.

Destruction was approaching fast for this little town and he prayed the kinship of the community would be strong enough to survive it. He felt the air around him begin to spiral, its spastic currents weaving tales of future desolation; the dead leaves at his feet shook in fear of its nearness. He felt the hatred around him pulsate, condense, hidden magics scowling at him from every corner. The moon and the stars had condemned him long ago, and now this place would follow.

He lifted his swirling eyes higher and they settled upon the tallest tower of the home, where shadows scurried behind the illuminated glass. Soft murmurs floated from the windows and down to his ears; his frown deepened. The babe was due.

Clouds pressed in, bloated and bruised with rain as they slunk across the blackened sky. The presence of thunder grew nearer, the apparition of lightening more blinding. The stranger closed his eyes as a guttural scream tore into the night, dragging through his ears as the hot rain began to pour. Scorching rain on a freezing winter night.

Splashing against his cold cheeks, it burned his face, and when he opened his eyes against it he saw the fringe of ungodly mist. It seeped from the corners of his eyes, swelling like sickness and clouding his vision, stealing it until all he could see was the misery to come. It was then that he knew this turn in time was vital, that it was a key element in the future of everything. He wanted to scream.

He had come to this little place initially because he was drawn. The slight tugging at his essence had enticed him, allured him, and so here he was. It was similar to that which he'd experienced at the fall of the Egyptians, and then again at the dawn of the French Revolution. He'd felt a touch of it at the miscalculations of Christopher Columbus, and more sharply at the ignition of WWII.

This, this was a dark curiosity, and it was so much stronger than anything he had ever felt before. It was the strength that had brought him here, the same strength than now paralyzed him in his place. For the first time, after all the battles and the lives and the history he had corrupted and helped to make, Fate found himself frozen, his eyes staring desolately up at the towering walls of Skelington Mannor.

A wave of anguish washed over him and he gritted his teeth, cursing. If he'd had any sense at all, he would have tried to stay away. Not that he could have managed it; it was not listed in his limited freedoms to ignore a Summoning. Damn the gods. Just once, he wanted to have a choice in what he was meant to decide.

A series of voices entered his head as another surge of pain coursed through him, each horridly seductive and brutal.

"Finish it, lovely, and we might let you return."

"But of course we shall, sister! And he will be lavishly rewarded."

"Now, girls, remember yourselves. I'm first born, I get first taste."

He snarled inside as their laughter faded, hating them. The Fates. More conniving and wretched creatures he had never met. Their cruelty concealed behind a façade of beauty and wisdom; they were his keepers, his lovers, and his unending torment.

His powers escalated in his distraction, tearing through his mind with an electrical charge. It rushed down his spine, gathering in his nerves before expelling from his eyes and into the night. His vision cleared instantly and he collapsed against the cobblestones, panting as he watched the mist rise through the rumbling and rain.

It curled upward, heading for the window as another scream echoed through the night; it quickened at the sudden shrill cries of a small newborn. The mist became shear as it crept beneath the glass, undetectable to mortals as it slithered inside the bundle and wrapped itself around the child. He could feel it soak into her skin, sense the slow, painless descent as it maneuvered through her heart and settled around her soul, caressing it like a loving mother before encasing it in a solid cocoon.

Weary, Fate climbed to his feet, his pale eyes lifting to the window. The storm died away, the rain ceased; it had begun. Even now, as Sally sat holding her babe, whose small body was so fresh from the womb and new to life, a horrible destiny was careening into motion. The child herself, so pure and untainted, was cursed to bring a future of grim happenings and ruined lives to Halloween, and with it, a perishing world.

He felt himself disappearing before he could watch the world slip away, felt the stifling embrace of the sisters as they pulled him back toward his eternal nightmare. His last conscious thought was that the name chosen for the child was so befitting it was almost heartbreaking, and he felt what was left of his heart tighten with remorse; Crysis.


End file.
